One conventional way to secure lead-mounted electrical components to a printed circuit board after inserting the leads through the holes in the board and before soldering is to bend the leads out or in slightly to secure the component to the board. This is done by backing up the board with a special tooling plate which has a number of crimping anvils pinned and screwed to the surface of the plate with the anvils arranged on the plate in the same pattern or array as the pattern or array of the components which are to be secured to the board.
This conventional lead-crimping operation is illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 1A in which the lead-mounted component is shown with the leads being inserted through the board holes in FIG. 1, and with the leads being bent outwardly slightly at their ends by the anvil as shown in FIG. 1A. The result is, of course, to lock the component to the board.
This lead-crimping operation is typically done with automated insertion machinery such as by a robotic manipulator of one type or another located at the work station. The operations as presently employed when the components are inserted by robots have what I consider to be a number of disadvantages, among which are that a crimping fixture must be designed, built, inspected, stored, and inventoried for every different printed circuit board made. Furthermore, to change over the production line to build a different board it is necessary to locate and withdraw the desired fixture from storage, inspect it for damage, bring it to the insertion machinery at the correct time, and shut the machine down while the no-longer-needed particular crimping tool with one particular array is removed, and the new one is installed and its alignment checked. Finally, the earlier used crimping tool must be returned to storage and the transfer of all tooling noted in the inventory records.
It is the aim of my invention to provide an automatic printed circuit board assembly method in which at least some of the disadvantages noted heretofore are avoided.